TSC Stores ditches their paper based loyalty program and launches RTC’s Customer Loyalty Rewards (CLR) solution, one of the most robust in the industry. Now shoppers are rewarded with points instantly at the POS, and they can use those points in the same transaction, building excitement and increasing customer satisfaction. Read more…
Tractor Supply (TSC Stores), a Canadian owned and operated retailer with 49 corporate stores, engages RTC to implement a Reserve management facility within their JDA MMS merchandising system. “Store Reserve” allows a store to receive ecommerce product(s) and upon receipt, the inventory will be put into a separate “bucket” called Store Reserve so that these quantities will be omitted from the rest of the available store inventory. Any product that is in Store Reserve will not be included in replenishment for the store and is the first phase towards available inventory accuracy that can be published on the corporate website.
Ecommerce fulfillment is a major challenge in any omni-channel operation. Allowing shoppers to buy online is great, but having a process in place to be able to fulfill online orders from anywhere, is true omni-channel.
In 2015, TSC Stores signed on to outsource the bulk of its IT operation to RTC. The deal included RTC taking over responsibility for all MMS operations (ASP), software maintenance and development and further leveraging RTC’s suite of MMSxTend applications including StoreMobile and Warehouse Optimization. Furthermore RTC has helped TSC make significant enhancements to their replenishment systems. These integrations are now complete, allowing TSC to be able to vastly improve their operational workflow while viewing, collecting and managing key information real-time to MMS. Having visibility and control of merchandise is the first step towards building an Omni Channel system to fulfill customer demands in today’s retail environment.
Every company’s fulfillment strategy is unique based on their internal infrastructure and operational capabilities. In the case of TSC, store pick up was an important channel in their ecommerce fulfillment strategy. Allowing shoppers to pick up Ecommerce orders in the store provides additional opportunities to interact with the shopper and increase sales. However, store pick up requires complete visibility and control of inventory, as well as the processes must be in place to handle pick up and sales.
“Our stores and Inventory teams are very excited to have this added functionality to better manage their available product for sale. Future phases will include a “bucket” for damaged inventory for added accuracy. This first phase of Ecommerce Store Reserve will be one of the stepping stones to providing visibility of our inventory by store location to our customers on our website. Once again, RTC worked with us from a vision to implementation with very few issues. says Susan Ross Director, IT & Capability Building at TSC Stores.
Phase two will allow full integration with the ecommerce website and provide system recommendations on fulfillment locations for each customer order accounting for store location, availability and expected receipts.
RTC recently completed a huge store systems upgrade at TSC Stores Canada, a Canadian owned and operated retailer with 49 corporate stores. This all-encompassing deal included replacement of their legacy WINDSS POS store system with RTC’s StoreMS POS. The implementation was completed in 2016 and immediately provided TSC stores with a fast, easy to use POS application that is able to provide the fast thru put and features like mobile POS, that today’s retailers need.
No longer hampered by systemic restrictions of a legacy WINDSS system, TSC’s merchandising team began to focus on growing their customer loyalty thru a new and exciting marketing program that includes a variety of new sales promotions. The only unanswered question was what “tool” they would use to manage the program. TSC’s first priority was to move beyond their paper based card program which was difficult to administer. Furthermore, their legacy solution did not allow any tracking or reporting, which is a vital part of any marketing effort.
After an extensive review, RTC’s Customer Loyalty Rewards(CLR) solution was selected to provide the merchants the ability to create unique and targeted promotions and powerful marketing campaigns to drive sales in the Equine and Pet Food categories. CLR is a real-time points and rewards loyalty program that is designed to be simple to use and require little to no training for store staff. The solution supports the utilization of a customer loyalty card that contains a barcode. When the card is scanned, the POS sends a request to CLR and retrieves the club, point history and available rewards for that customer. The available rewards can be redeemed in the transaction and if they are not redeemed, they are printed on the receipt. With capital dollar spending always scrutinized at TSC, RTC was able to implement CLR under a new SaaS model, which allows TSC to have full access to the solution, on their box, with no capital license fees.
After several intense design sessions with the TSC team, the application was installed, configured, tested and deployed in a few months. TSC already had a pretty robust customer database, so their requirements for the solution were straightforward, the application had to be easy to train and deploy and simple for merchants to manage. The application had to be quantity driven with an uncomplicated redemption process and instantly provide the reward to the customer within the same transaction. Furthermore, the application had to be integrated into the POS and seamless to the customer.
Rewarding shoppers instantly, and allowing them to use their reward in the same transaction, builds excitement and increases customer satisfaction. TSC utilizes a (Buy x, get x free) model that is simple to manage for the store and easy for customers to understand. Customers build up the number of bags purchased and when the quantity threshold is met, the next bag is free is the driving message RTC received from TSC as the project started up.
CLR exceeded all their expectations. Six weeks after the implementation, TSC was able to sign up and or convert more than 6,300 customers and launch a total of 13 new clubs. “RTC offered us a solution through our POS systems in store that would allow for easy sign-up, tracking, reporting, and great flexibility to add clubs as the program grows, says Susan Ross Director, IT & Capability Building at TSC Stores. “We are very pleased so far, and our sales and margin are close to our expectations. Shoppers are happy with the program so far, and cashiers have found it very simple to sign up new customers. The RTC team is always great to work with! They were able to meet our tight timelines and we haven’t had any major issues since we went live in all stores. Having the program bolt onto our existing POS system has allowed us to create reporting and tracking to fully understand the return of the program and help to lay out next steps,” added Susan.
“Many retailers reward all shoppers the same, but those programs come at the cost of margins. At the end of the day, margin is what it’s all about”, says Jeff Cook Director Store Systems RTC. “If you can increase sales in a positive way, by rewarding your best and most loyal shoppers, while maintaining margins, that is a program you want to keep”, says Cook. “CLR gives the marketing organization more control and flexibility than they ever had to design creative targeted campaigns around specific product offerings and delivered a significant ROI”.
TSC Stores, a Canadian owned and operated retailer with 52 corporate stores, recently signed a “mega deal” to have RTC outsource the bulk of its IT operation. This all-encompassing deal includes RTC taking over responsibility for all MMS operations (ASP), software maintenance and development and further leverage RTC’s suite of MMSxTend applications. While TSC has already leveraged several of RTC’s MMSxTend applications including StoreMobile and Warehouse Optimization over the years, TSC is considering adding RTC’s Advanced Replenishment & Allocation modules, in the near future. With the Corporate retail systems operation now in the hands of RTC with the management and guidance of Susan Ross, Director of IT for TSC Stores, TSC then turned its attention to its biggest remaining IT headache, which is their legacy WinDSS POS store system. Susan and the TSC Executive Management team was not shy in turning to RTC to solve this problem as well.
Given JDA® “sunsetted” WinDSS POS several years ago, TSC has continued to fall behind in the industry with regard to the limitations of its legacy store systems capabilities. The result of these technical limitations prevents TSC from making simple POS changes needed on an ongoing basis and enhancing the POS system with advanced features such as Mobile POS and Inventory Management from one device. These systemic restrictions continue to inhibit TSC’s retail store operation from making technological advancements that are proven to increase its customer service levels given the state of store systems technology available today and had to be overcome. TSC turned to RTC to implement its StoreMS POS and StoreMS Mobile store systems knowing that its store systems suite of applications has a reputation of being fast, easy to use, easy to modify and supports mobile POS within its core POS application.
“In my time working with RTC, we have found them to be a strong strategic business partner and consider the RTC team an extension of our own. We are looking forward to rolling out the new StoreMS POS and continuing to build our relationship with RTC”, says Susan Ross, Director, IT & Capability Building at TSC Stores.
With the first pilot store scheduled in late August, TSC is looking forward to overcoming the current systemic limitations and gaining a technological advantage within its store operation. TSC has noted the ease and efficiency of using StoreMS POS, its advanced Sequel database design, as well as the integrated mobility built right into StoreMS POS making it agnostic to typical POS hardware as well as a wide variety of mobile devices. The expected net result is an increase in customer services and satisfaction. Look to our next newsletter toward the end of the year to highlight the results of our StoreMS POS implementation within TSC Stores as the rollout begins in September.
“As a long-time customer of RTC, TSC Stores is one of the few customers that we have actually worked closely with in building two of our core MMSxTend applications, so we have intimate knowledge of their operation over a long period of time. That was a critical factor in stepping in and providing the level of outsourcing from MMS to store systems at TSC that we are now responsible for. I am very confident that this partnership will not only stand the test of time, but will ultimately provide TSC with a competitive advantage”, says Bruce Hicks, RTC President & CEO.
